Everything is on fire
It's not about doing your best...
“In religion it is not enough for people to do the best that they can. That can never be enough. Our life is more perilous than that. Everything is on fire. We cannot put out the flames, for we too are engulfed. I pray to Jesus Christ not because he was the teacher who showed us how to do the best we can, but because he is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Miserere mei, Domine.”
--Prof. John B. Buescher, about his return from Buddhism to Catholicism, “Everything Is On Fire” Books & Culture (Jan/Feb 2008).
The great, abiding comfort in my life as a Christian is the truth that it’s not up to me. My efforts, my works, my holiness are not the things that determine whether or not I can be forgiven, or saved. Buddhism and most other religions encourage people to do their best, to emulate the teachings of the founder, to strive to walk the path of righteousness, however defined. A little bit of effort and self-discipline, a little bit of mindfulness, a little bit of spiritual practice, and everything will be right as rain.
Not Christianity. Christianity teaches that the situation is much, much worse than “a little bit” of anything can fix. And I am much, much worse. Christianity teaches me that I can never be good enough, never pray hard enough, never be saintly enough to compel the saving hand of God to move. Everything is on fire.
And yet, God has moved his hand to save me anyway, because he loves me. His Son came down—although he didn’t have to. Christ rushed into the burning house of mankind in Bethlehem, and into the burning hovel of my life all those years ago as a feckless twenty-something in Tokyo. He picked me up and carried me out, out into the fresh air of life with him, into everlasting safety in his presence. All I had to do was to trust him to carry me.
This truth—that Christ does the work for me, that his righteousness is sufficient for me, that his unblemished goodness in the eyes of the Father becomes the lens through which the Father sees me, too, because I am in Christ—this truth is what has upheld me. Even during seasons of loss and mourning. Even during seasons of the unutterable fear of loss. Even in my repeated falls and failures and the practical unbelief I so often demonstrate by those things I have left undone which I ought to have done and those things I have done which I ought not to have done.
I can’t put out the flames of sorrow or fear or guilt that are so often poised to burn the hovel of my life to the ground, much less the flames of wickedness and rebelliousness burning the whole world down—but again and again Christ comes in and carries me out. He never tires of saving me.
Of course, I should try to emulate him. Out of gratitude, I should try to do what he taught us to do, and not do what he taught us not to do. But I can only do that after I am outside sitting on the ground, already rescued from the house engulfed in flames that is our sin-sick world, and my sin-sick life apart from Christ.
Praise to the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world, and my sins.